A smart home environment is created by integrating a plurality of consumer electronic devices, including intelligent, multi-sensing, network-connected devices, seamlessly with each other in a local area network and/or with a central server or a cloud-computing system to provide a variety of useful smart home functions. For example, one or more network-connected cameras are often installed at a venue to provide video monitoring and security. These consumer electronic devices (e.g., the network-connected cameras) normally have compact form factors, but have to accommodate and provide strong computational and communication capabilities such that information is processed locally and provided to a remote user in real time to render satisfactory user experience. Such computational and communication capabilities cause heat to accumulate in local regions of the consumer electronic devices, and result in temperature increases that could compromise performance of heat-sensitive electronic components located in the local regions. Given their compact form factors, these consumer electronic devices cannot take advantage of many commonly applied heat dissipation mechanisms (e.g., cooling fans and heat sinks with extended fin structures). Therefore, there is a need to dissipate heat generated within a compact consumer electronic device away from any heat-sensitive assembly of the consumer electronic device.